The present invention relates to a vehicle running control apparatus and map information data recording medium, such as a Cruise Control apparatus, Adaptive Cruise Control (described ACC hereinafter) apparatus or the like.
The ACC apparatus is well known. The ACC apparatus includes a function for keeping the distance between one's own vehicle and preceding vehicles running in front of the one's own vehicle.
Techniques relating the ACC apparatus is disclosed in, for example, JP-A-10-166899 as a running control apparatus. In the running control apparatus, the ACC apparatus includes normal control function and deciding means for deciding at least one object value of the distance between vehicles and running speed in response to the output from an estimating means for estimating running road environment recognizing characteristics for a driver.
Further, the running road environment recognizing characteristics estimating means detects the image of the front road surface by using a camera. The estimating means estimates the running road environment recognizing characteristics on the basis of the number of edges in the detected road image or the ratio the areas of whole image to the area of specific color or brightness. The number of the edges represents structures or vehicle parking on the road.
Further, other means for estimating running road environment recognizing characteristics estimates the environment on the basis of the wide of the road, attributes of road (national high way, automobile road, automobile expressway or the like), the number of brunches or the like, which are obtained from a car navigation system, traffic infrastructure or the image of the front road.
Furthermore, other means for estimating running road environment recognizing characteristics estimates the road environment on the basis of the standard deviation of the accelerator divergence within a predetermined time range before the start of constant speed running control.
As described above, the vehicle running control apparatus analyzes the uneasiness environment for a driver by using a running environment recognizing apparatus, compensating the object distance between one's own vehicle and preceding vehicle and the a vehicle speed set by the driver. Accordingly, the vehicle running control apparatus can control the vehicle running suitable for the road environment, so that a driver uses the constant speed running control apparatus with peace of mind and with no sense of incompatibly of auto speed control in case of no receding vehicle.